Tuesday, 10 February 2009

MANILA (AFP) — Call-centres and other outsourcing companies in the Philippines earned 6.06 billion dollars in 2008, a 26 percent increase over 2007, the industry association said Monday.

The number of people working in the industry also rose over the same period, by 24.8 percent to 371,965, despite the global financial crisis, said Oscar Sanez, head of the country's Business Processing Association.

He said that this showed the Philippines was on track with its plan to capture 10 percent of global market for outsourced services by 2010.

Call-centres still accounted for the bulk of the industry, earning 4.1 billion dollars in 2008 and employing 227,000 people, Sanez said.

But other sectors such as back-office operations, transcription, animation, software, engineering services and game development all showed strong growth as well, he added.Officials and industry leaders say they expect the industry to continue growing as more foreign companies seek to save money by outsourcing functions to low-cost countries like the Philippines.

Despite this, the Philippines still needed to promote its capabilities abroad, Sanez said, citing personal experiences in Germany and England which suggested people were unaware that English was spoken in his country.

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